The Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, Germany was on site with IBC Solar to celebrate the groundbreaking of the company’s new Sukow Solar Park. Set to be built across 76.6-acres of the former Sukow landfill, the 11MWp solar installation is expected to be completed in August and use 48,000 PV modules to generate 10,500,000kWh of solar electricity every year.
Solarion hosted a groundbreaking ceremony for its CIGS thin-film solar cell and module factory in Saxon, Germany. The event was attended by company and state officials who noted that this is the company’s first production facility for mass manufacturing of its thin-film PV technology. The €40 million project will house a 129,167 square foot production facility on a 7.4-acre site at the Zwenkau-South industrial park, with a 20MW production volume at its inception in 2012.
Bulgaria’s solar industry is facing the threat of stagnation, after the Government unveiled a new renewable energy bill that could cut industry subsidies by as much as 30%. The feed-in tariff (FiT) reductions were part of a wider set of cuts to the renewable sector, which have been introduced to help the country meet its EU 2020 targets.
Wattner has acquired a 9.2MW solar system, which will be constructed across five of Germany-based Opel’s rooftops. Wattner secured EWT SolServ for the construction and installation of the project, which will use nearly 40,000 solar modules and 500 inverters. The energy produced from the project will be fed directly into Opel’s corporate grid.
Innotech Solar has signed a US$8.18 million (NOK 45 million) deal to provide 4.3MWp of its PV modules and engineering services to an undisclosed Spanish customer. The PV modules will be part of a roof mounted solar project near Grenada, Spain and use over 20,000 of Innotech’s PV modules. Delivery is scheduled to begin this month and conclude in September. The Spanish PV plant has an estimated 6GWh of electricity output per year.
PV module manufacturer, China Sunergy has obtained the UK’s Microgeneration Certification Scheme certification, which allows the company to market its modules in the country.
3S Photovoltaics, a division of Meyer Burger Technology, Sputnik Engineering and BE Netz have partnered for the development of Switzerland’s Umwelt Arena. Located in the town of Spreitenbach, near Zurich, the building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) project covers over 57,048 square feet of the arena’s rooftop and holds the possibility of generating 540,000kWh of solar energy every year.
A 48MW project in Northern Italy worth several hundred million Euro is close to being sold by project developer SAG Solarstrom, after a 12MW section of the PV power plant was connected to the Italian grid via a new transformer substation specifically for the project. Italian Terna, which has already performed the technical acceptance and commissioning, is said to be planning to purchase the substation.
Italian agro-industrial group Cereals Docks has installed four solar rooftop arrays at two of its sites on the outskirts of Venice. The systems were installed by electrical engineers Elpo, which used over 15,000 polycrystalline modules and Sputnik Engineering’s SolarMax C central inverters to build the 3MW portfolio.
Construction at the FVE Kresandra and FVE Power Plant 1 in Mokra Luka, Slovakia has begun according to Efektim. Development for the two power plants, which have a power output of 984.96kW and 974.70kW, respectively, began earlier this month and is expected to reach completion this June.
